To battle natural hazards, interdisciplinary research team turns to resilient, sustainable buildings

A team of Northeastern researchers has received a National Science Foundation grant to develop a decision framework for designing buildings that are both resilient and sustainable in the face of multiple environmental hazards like earthquakes, flooding, and heavy winds. Photo via Istock

An inter­dis­ci­pli­nary team of North­eastern researchers has received a three-​​year, $1.1 mil­lion grant from the National Sci­ence Foun­da­tion to develop a deci­sion frame­work for designing build­ings that are both resilient and sus­tain­able in the face of mul­tiple hazards—specifically, earth­quakes, flooding, and high winds.

Tufts Uni­ver­sity asso­ciate pro­fessor Laurie Baise and William Coul­bourne, director of wind and flood hazard mit­i­ga­tion at the Applied Tech­nology Council, are also co-​​principal investigators.

The team empha­sized the impor­tance of taking an inter­dis­ci­pli­nary approach to this project. Together, the researchers will leverage their exper­tise in areas such as per­for­mance based engi­neering, col­lapse analysis, sus­tain­able archi­tec­ture design, building life­cycle assess­ment, eco­nomics, and public policy.

“As a society, we need build­ings that per­form their func­tion well in response to haz­ards and last as long as they are designed for, build­ings that are both resilient and sus­tain­able,” Sasani said. “The goal of our research is to create a frame­work that could help designers sys­tem­i­cally con­sider mul­tiple haz­ards with dif­ferent sever­i­ties and stake­holders to make informed deci­sions throughout the design process.”

The team noted that cur­rent research and design approaches typ­i­cally involve designing build­ings to with­stand each hazard inde­pen­dent of the others, but not a con­sis­tent design to with­stand mul­tiple haz­ards. Fur­ther­more, the researchers said these approaches do not sys­tem­at­i­cally inte­grate resilience and sus­tain­ability over the lifespan of a building’s var­ious systems.

This project, the researchers said, extends beyond performance-​​based engi­neering and cur­rent building codes and stan­dards to account for the resilience and sus­tain­ability of build­ings. Their frame­work would sup­port informed deci­sions based on mea­suring the envi­ron­mental impact of build­ings throughout their life, quan­ti­fying build­ings’ func­tional per­for­mance in the face of envi­ron­mental haz­ards, and ensuring con­sis­tent resilience across mul­tiple hazards.

“Designing more effi­cient, adapt­able, and resilient build­ings can have a big impact on reducing the nation’s envi­ron­mental impact,” Fannon said.

One of the goals is for their frame­work to pro­vide uni­form resilience across dif­ferent hazards—that is, build­ings designed for sites prone to one hazard or another will face roughly the same recovery time and roughly equal loss of func­tion­ality over their lifespan.

Their research will examine how well build­ings in three rep­re­sen­ta­tive cities—Boston, Miami, and San Francisco—are designed to with­stand these types of envi­ron­mental haz­ards; each city, they noted, faces at least two of these hazards.

The team envi­sions their final design frame­work being used to inform building codes, risk val­u­a­tion, and design prac­tices, and could help designers, owners, reg­u­la­tors, and insurers to eval­uate the con­tin­uing per­for­mance of build­ings in the face of adverse events.

“This multi-​​hazard approach gets away from the men­tality of design based on the impact of the last dis­aster and instead shapes the decision-​​making in a way that sup­ports a much more sus­tain­able, long-​​term per­for­mance of these build­ings that syncs with the needs of their occu­pants over time,” Ruth said.

About the Writer

Greg St. Martin is a senior editor for news@Northeastern in the Office of Marketing and Communications. He joined Northeastern in March 2010 after working at the Boston Metro newspaper for six years. Outside of work, he enjoys playing basketball, congratulating himself on finding great parking spots in the city, and listening to the comic genius of Steven Wright. He lives in Newton, Massachusetts, with his wife and daughter.

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